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8 января 2012 г.

The Karabakh Conflict: Origins, Causes, Consequences

The history of the Karabakh conflict is a short episode in the almost
200-year chronicle of interaction between the Armenian ethnos and the
peoples of the Caucasus. The cardinal changes in the South Caucasus
were caused by the large-scale policy of resettlement which was started
by the Tsarist Russia in the 19th-20th centuries and then continued by
the USSR up to the moment of dissolution of the Soviet state. The process of resettlement can be divided into two phases:

The 19th-early 20th century, when the ethnic Armenians moved from Persia, the Ottoman Empire and Near East to the Caucasus.

The 20th century, when migration processes were taking place
within the Caucasus and the indigenous peoples (local population) --
Azerbaijanis, Georgians and smaller peoples of the Caucasus -- were
pushed out from the areas of settlement of ethnic Armenians, which
resulted in creation of ethnic Armenian majority in those areas for the
purpose of furthering the territorial claims against the peoples of the
Caucasus.

To clearly understand the causes of the Karabakh conflict, we have to
embark on a historical and geographic journey of the Armenian people.
The Armenian term for Armenian is Hay, and the mythical motherland is
called Hayastan.

The Armenian (Hay) people arrived in their current geographic area of
settlement -- the South Caucasus -- on account of historical events and
geopolitical struggle among great powers in the Near East, Asia Minor
and the Caucasus. As it stands in the present-day historiography of the
world, the majority of the researchers of Ancient Middle East concur on
the opinion that the original motherland of the Hay people was the
Balkans (South-Eastern Europe).

"Father of History" Herodotus pointed out that Armenians were
descendants of the Phrygians, residents of the South Europe. I. Shopen,
the Russian Caucasus scholar of the 19th century, also argued that the "Armenians
are essentially new arrivals. They are the genus of Phrygians and
Ionians, who moved to the northern valleys of the Anatolian mountains."

Prominent Armenia scholar M. Abegyan pointed out: "It is
supposed that long before the new era, the ancestors of the Armenians
(Hay) lived in Europe, near the ancestors of the Greeks and Thracians,
whence they migrated to Asia Minor. In Herodotus's period, in the 5th
century BC, people still remembered that Armenians came to their land
from the west."

The ancestors of the modern Armenians, the Hay, migrated from the
Balkans to the Armenian plateau (eastern part of Asia Minor), where the
ancient Medes and Persians, who lived nearby, gave them the name of
their earlier neighbors, the Armen. The Greeks and the Romans adopted
the name for both the new people and the area which they occupied, and
through them, the ethnonym "Armenians" and toponym "Armenia" gained
currency in the historical science, although the Armenians themselves
still call themselves Hay, which is just another proof that they are
immigrants in Armenia.

V.L. Velichko, a Russian scholar of the Caucasus, noticed in the early 20th century: "The
Armenians, a people of unknown origin with unquestionable admixture of
the Jewish, Syrian-Chaldean and Gypsy bloods; by far not everyone who
consider themselves Armenian belong to the original Armenian tribe."

From Asia Minor, the Armenian settlers started to arrive in the
Caucasus -- the present-day Armenia and Karabakh. In connection with
this, researcher S.P. Zelinskiy noted that the Armenians who arrived in
Karabakh in different periods did not understand one another's
language: "The main difference between the Armenians of
different areas of Zangezur (which was part of the Karabakh khanate) is
the language they speak. There are almost as many tongues as there are
districts or individual villages here."

Several conclusions can be drawn from the statements by the 19th-early
20th century Russian researchers of the Caucasus above: The Armenian
ethnic group cannot be indigenous not only in Karabakh or Azerbaijan,
but in the South Caucasus in general. The "Armenians" who used to
arrive in the Caucasus in different periods of history did not know
about one another's existence and spoke different languages, in other
words, back then there was no single Armenian language or Armenian
people.

So, stage by stage, the ancestors of the Armenians had acquired a
motherland in the South Caucasus, where they occupied the native lands
of the Azerbaijanis. The phase of mass resettlement of the
Armenians to the South Caucasus was marked by a favorable attitude to
the process in the Arab Caliphate, which sought social support in the
conquered territories and was therefore lenient toward the resettlement
of the Armenians. The Armenians found home in the Caucasus, on
the territory of the state of Caucasian Albania, but soon enough the
Albanians (ancestors of modern-day Azerbaijani) would pay the price for
their hospitality. With help from the Arabian Caliphate, the
Armenian Gregorian Church made an attempt to take control of the
Albanian Church in 704, and the library of Albanian Catholicos Nerses
Bakur was destroyed once it was transferred under control of the
Armenian clergy. Arab Caliph Abd al-Malik Umayyad (685-705)
issued orders to merge the Autocephalous Albanian Church and Christian
Albanians who had not converted to Islam with the Armenian Gregorian
Church. But back then, this plan could not be implemented in full, and the Albanians had defended their church and statehood.

In the early 15th century, the situation of the Armenians in
the Byzantine Empire worsened, and the Armenian Church shifted its focus
toward the loyalist Caucasus, where it started to pursue the goal of
founding its own state. The high-level Armenian clergymen paid
a number of visits and wrote a large number of letters to the Albanian
patriarchs with requests to give a refuge in the Caucasus "to their
Christian brothers in distress." The Armenian Church, forced to wander
around the Byzantine cities, had eventually lost most of its Armenian
congregation, which adopted Catholicism, and therefore faced the threat
of total disappearance. As a result, the Albanian patriarch
allowed some of the Armenian clergymen to move to the Echmiadzin (Three
Muezzins) -- Uchkilise Monastery in the South Caucasus circa 1441, which
is on the territory of modern-day Armenia, and they had finally found a
long-awaited peace and place where they could pursue their political
plans.

From there, the Armenian settlers started to move to Karabakh, which
they decided to call Artsakh from then on in an attempt to prove that it
was an Armenian land. It has to be noted that the toponym "Artsakh,"
which is sometimes used to refer to Nagorno-Karabakh, is of local
origin. In the modern Udin language, which was one of the languages of
Caucasian Albania, "artsesun" means to "sit" or "sit down." The verb form gave rise to "artsi" -- "settled; non-nomadic people who lead a settled life style."
In Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus, there are tens of geographic
names with formants of the -akh, -ekh, -ukh, -okh, -ikh, -yukh, -ykh
types. Toponyms with the same formants still exist in Azerbaijan
today: Qurm-ux, Qoxm-ux, Mamr-ux, Mux-ax, Cimcim-ax, Sam-ux, Arts-ax, Sad-ux, Az-ix.

In her fundamental academic work "The Caucasian Albania and
Albanians," Old Armenian Language specialist, Albania researcher and
historian Farida Mammadova, who in the Soviet era studied medieval
Armenian manuscripts, established that many of these manuscripts were
written 200-300 years ago, but are described as "ancient." Many
Armenian chronicles are based on ancient Albanian books to which
Armenians gained access after the abolition by the Russian Empire of the
Albanian Church in 1836 and transfer of its entire legacy to the
Armenian Church, which rewrote on this basis the "ancient" Armenian
history. Effectively, after arriving in the Caucasus, the
Armenian chroniclers cobbled up the history of their people from on the
tombstone of the Albanian culture in a very real sense.

In the 15-17th centuries, under the powerful Azerbaijani states of
White Sheep Turkomans, Black Sheep Turkomans and Safavids, the Armenian
Catholicoi wrote humble letters to the rulers of those states with
reassurances of their loyalty and implorations for assistance in
resettlement of Armenians to the Caucasus to deliver them from the "yoke
of the perfidious Ottomans." In this manner, taking advantage of the confrontation
between the Ottoman and Safavid empires, a large number of ethnic
Armenians moved to the Safavid territories on the border between the two
states -- the modern-day Armenia, Naxcivan and Karabakh.

However, the period of rise of the Azerbaijani state of Safavids gave
way by the early 18th century to feudal disunity which resulted in a
split of state into 20 khanates with practical absence of a centralized
authority. The period of rise of the Russian Empire started, and under
Peter I (1682-1725) the Armenian Church, which pinned great hopes on the
Russian crown in its efforts of resumption of the Armenian statehood,
started to broaden its ties and contacts with the Russian political
circles. In 1714, the Armenian vardapet (archimandrite) Minas sent to
Emperor Peter I the "proposal to build a monastery on the shore
of the Caspian Sea in the interests of the expected war between Russia
and the Safavid state, which might act as a fortress during the combat
operation. The main objective of the vardapet, however, was
persuading Russia into acceptance of the ethnic Armenians who were
scattered all over the world as its subjects, which was what Minas asked
Peter I to do later, in 1718. He petitioned him on behalf of "all the
Armenians" and asked him to "free them from the yoke of the infidels and accept them as Russian subjects."
However, Peter I's Caspian campaign (1722) was never finalized because
of lack of success from the outset, and the emperor did not populate the
Caspian coastline with Armenians whom he considered "the 'best way' of consolidating Russia's positions on the newly acquired territories in the Caucasus."

But the Armenians did not despair and kept sending numerous petitions
to Emperor Peter I, imploring him to protect them. Reacting to these
petitions, Peter I sent to the Armenians a document which allowed them
to visit Russia without hindrance for trade and which instructed the "Armenian
people to get encouraged by the imperial grace and reassure them of the
emperor's readiness to extend his auspices to protect them."

At the same time, on 24 September 1724 the emperor instructed
A. Rumyantsev, who was about to leave for Istanbul, to persuade the
Armenians to move to the areas along the Caspian coastline and tell them
that the local residents there 'will be evicted and they, the
Armenians, will be given their lands.'" Peter I's policy on the "Armenians issue" was continued by Catherine II (1762-1796) by "expressing her assent to reestablish an Armenian kingdom under Russia's auspices."
In other words, the Russian Empire decided to "reestablish" in the
Caucasus Tigran I's Armenian state which once existed for only several
decades in Asia Minor (now Turkey).

Catherine II's courtiers developed a plan which indicated "for
the initial period, there is a need to gain foothold in Derbent, seize
Samaxi and Ganca, and then from Karabakh and Sighnaghi, if sufficient
forces are mustered, seizing Yerevan will be easy." As a result,
already in the early 19th century Armenians started to move to the South
Caucasus in noticeable numbers because the Russian Empire already
brought the region, including northern Azerbaijan, under its control.

In the 17th-early 19th centuries, the Russian empire fought eight wars
with the Ottoman Empire and finally established itself on the three seas
-- Caspian, Azov and Black, annexed the Caucasus and Crimea and
extended its influence to the Balkans. The territory of the Russian
Empire was further extended in the Caucasus after the Russian-Persian
wars of 1804-1813 and 1826-1828. All this was bound to change the
orientation of the Armenians who, with every new Russian victory,
increasingly leaned towards Russia.

In 1804-1813, Russia conducted negotiations with Armenians from the
Ottoman vilayet of Erzerum in Asia Minor. The talks were about
migration to the South Caucasus, mainly the Azerbaijani lands. The
Armenian reply was: "When with God's grace Yerevan is occupied
by the Russian troops, all Armenians will certainly agree to come under
Russia's auspices and live in the province of Yerevan."

Before we continue the description of the process of resettlement of
the ethnic Armenians, there is a need to review the history of Yerevan,
which was given its current name after the occupation by the Russian
troops of the Irevan khanate and the city of Irevan (Erivan). Yet
another proof of the fact that the Armenians are immigrants in the
Caucasus and in particular, in the present-day Armenia, is the history
of celebrations of the anniversaries of founding of the city of
Yerevan. It seems that many people have already forgotten that before the 1950s, the Armenians did not even know the age of the city of Yerevan.

Let us digress a little and note that, according to historical
facts, Irevan (Yerevan) was founded in the early 16th century as a
pivotal fortress of the Safavid (Azerbaijani) Empire on the border with
the Ottoman Empire. To stop the expansion of the Ottoman Empire
eastwards, Shah Ismail I Safavi ordered to build a fortress on Zengi
River in 1515. Vizier Revan-Quli Khan was put in charge of
construction. Hence the name of the fortress, Revan-Qala. Eventually,
Revan-Qala became the city of Revan, and then Irevan. Later,
when the Safavid Empire was in decline, more than 20 independent
Azerbaijani khanates were created, one of which was the Irevan khanate,
which existed until the invasion of the Russian Empire into the region
and seizure of Irevan in the early 19th century.

However, let us go back to the artificial "aging" of the history of the
city of Yerevan which we witnessed in the Soviet era. This started
when in 1950, the Soviet archeologists found near Lake Sevan (old name -
Goyca) a cuneiform tablet. Although the inscription read "RBN"
(cuneiform script did not include vowels), this was immediately
interpreted by the Armenian side as Erebuni. This was name of
the Erebuni fortress in the ancient kingdom of Urartu, which is believed
to be founded in 782 BC, and immediately the authorities of the
Armenian SSR seized the opportunity to celebrate 2,750th anniversary of
Yerevan in 1968.

Researcher Shnirelman wrote about this strange story: "At the same
time, there is no direct connection at all between the archeological
discovery and the celebrations (in Soviet Armenia) which were held
later. After all, the pompous celebrations were organized not by
archeologists, but by the Armenian authorities, who had spent huge
amounts of money on that... Besides, what does the Armenian capital,
Yerevan, have in common with an Urartian fortress whose link with
Armenians is yet to be proven? The answer to these questions is no
secret to anyone who is familiar with the recent history of Armenia. It
has to be sought in the events of 1965, which caused a stir, as we will
see below, in the entire Armenia and gave a powerful impetus to the
rise of Armenian nationalism." ("Wars of memory, myths, identity and politics in the Transcaucasus," V.A. Shnirelman).

In other words, had there been no accidental and incorrectly
interpreted archeological finding, the Armenians would have never
learned that their "native" Yerevan is more than 2,800 years old. But
had Yerevan been part of the ancient Armenian culture, this would have
been kept in the memories and history of the Armenian people, and for
all these 28 centuries, the Armenians would have celebrated the founding
of their city.

Going back to the process of movement the ethnic Armenians to the
Caucasus -- Armenia and Karabakh -- let us resort to prominent Armenian
scientists. In particular, American-Armenian historian, Columbia
University Professor George (Gevork) Burnutyan, wrote: "When they
deal with the statistics after the 1830s, a number of Armenian
historians misinterpret the number of ethnic Armenians in Eastern
Armenia (Burnutyan uses this term to describe the present-day territory
of Armenia) in the years of Persian rule (i.e. before the Turkmanchay
Treaty of 1828), citing the figure of 30 to 50% of the total
population. In the reality, however, according to the official
statistical data after the Russian annexation, ethnic Armenians hardly
accounted for just under 20% of the total population of Eastern Armenia,
while the Muslims constituted more than 80% of the population... So,
there is no evidence that ethnic Armenians constituted a majority in any
of the districts during the years of the Persian administration (before
the occupation of the region by the Russian Empire)... Only
after the Russian-Turkish wars of 1855-56 and 1877-78, after which even
more ethnic Armenians arrived in the region, and even more Muslims left
it, so the Armenians had finally become the ethnic majority there. Even after that, however, the city of Irevan remained predominantly Muslim until the early 20th century."Another Armenian scientist, Ronal Suny, confirms this information. (George Burnutyan, article "The
Ethnic Composition and the Socio-Economic Condition of Eastern Armenia
in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century" in the book "Transcaucasia,
Nationalism and Social Change. Essays in the History of Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia," 1996, pp 77-80.

As for the settlement of Armenians in Karabakh, Michigan
University Professor Ronald G. Suny, wrote in his book "Looking Towards
Ararat": "From the antiquity and through the Middle Ages, Karabakh
was part of the principality (in the vernacular, 'kingdom') of the
Caucasian Albanians. The independent ethno-religious
group, which does not exist in any more, converted to Christianity in
the 4th century AD and was close to the Armenian Church. In time, the
top echelon of the Albanian elite was Armenized... The people (Caucasian Albanians) who were the direct ancestors of today's Azerbaijanis spoke a Turkic language and adopted Shi'a Islam from the neighboring Iran. The
mountain areas (Karabakh), however, remained predominantly Christian,
and eventually the Karabakh Albanians were absorbed with immigrating
Armenians.The center of the Albanian Church,
Ganzasar, became one of the dioceses of the Armenian Church. The
vestiges of the once independent national church can be found only in
the status of the local arch-bishop, whose title is Catholicos" (Prof. Ronald Grigor Suny, "Looking Towards Ararat," 1993, p. 193).

Another Western historian, Svante Cornell, citing the Russian
statistics, also described the dynamic of growth of the Armenian
population in Karabakh in the 19th century: "According to the Russian census, in 1823 9% of the Karabakh population were ethnic Armenians (the
remaining 91% were registered as Muslim), in 1832 their proportion
increased to 35%, and in 1880, they were already the majority -- 53%." (Svante
Cornell, 'Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical
Conflict in the Caucasus," RoutledgeCurzon Press, 2001, p. 68).

Pushing out the Persian and Ottoman empires, the Russian Empire
expanded its territories southwards in the 18th-early 19th century,
incorporating the Azerbaijani khanates. In the complex political
situation of the period, the history of Karabakh khanate, which had
become an arena for the struggle between the Russian and Ottoman empires
and Persia, unfolded in an interesting manner.

Particular threat to the Azerbaijan khanates was posed by Persia,
where in 1794 Aga Muhammad Khan Qajar, who was of Azerbaijani descent,
became the shah and decided to restore the former glory of the Safavid
state using as the guiding principle uniting the Caucasus lands with the
administrative and political center in the south of Azerbaijan and
Persia. The idea did not inspire many of the khans in the
northern Azerbaijan, who felt inclined towards the rapidly growing
Russian Empire. In that momentous and difficult period, the ruler of
the Karabakh khanate, Ibrahim Khalil Khan, was the initiator of creation
of the anti-Qacar coalition. Bloody wars started in Karabakh, and the
Persian Shah Qajar personally led campaigns against the Karabakh khanate
and his capital, city of Susa.

But all attempts of the Persian shah to conquer these lands failed, and
in the end, despite the capture of the Susa fortress, Aga Muhammad Khan
was killed there by his own courtiers, and the remnants of his troops
escaped to Persia. The victory of Ibrahim Khalil Khan enabled him to
start the final negotiations on accession of his land into the Russian
Empire. On 14 May 1805, the Karabakh khanate and Russian Empire
signed the treaty on incorporation of the khanate under the Russian
authority, which made the destiny of these lands part of the Tsarist
Russia's history. It has to be noted that the treaty which was
signed by Ibrahim Khan of Susa and Karabakh and Russian General Prince
Tsitsianov and which consisted of 11 articles did not mention the
presence of Armenians. In the period, there were five Albanian
melikdoms under the authority of the Karabakh khan, and there was no
mention of any Armenian political entities, otherwise their existence
would by all means be mentioned by the Russian sources.

Despite the successful end of the Russian-Persian war (1826-1828),
Russia made no hurry about signing a peace treaty with Persia. Finally,
on 10 February 1828, the Russian Empire and the Persian state
signed the Turkmanchay Treaty, under which both the Irevan and Naxcivan
khanates were also incorporated by Russia. Under its terms, Azerbaijan
was divided into two parts, northern and southern, and the borderline
ran along the Araz River.

Article 15 of the Turkmanchay Treaty was special in that it allowed "all
residents and officials of the Azerbaijani district a one-year period
for unimpeded resettlement with their families from the Persian areas to
Russian." The article focused first and foremost on the "Persian Armenians." To implement this plan, the "sublime ukase" by the Russian Senate was passed on 21 March 1828, which read that "Pursuant
to the treaty with Persia, which was signed 10 February 1828, we decree
that the Erivan khanate and Naxcivan khanate, both incorporated into
Russia, be henceforth called the Armenian district."

So, the foundation was laid for the future Armenian statehood in the Caucasus.
A committee for resettlement was created, which controlled the
migration processes, helping the immigrating Armenians get settled in
the new places in a manner which would prevent the residents of the new
settlements from contacting the residents of the local Azerbaijani
villages. Failing to handle a huge stream of immigrants and settle them
all in the Irevan Governorate, the Caucasus Administration decided to
persuade most of the Armenian settlers to move to Karabakh. As a result
of the mass migration of Armenians from Persia to northern Azerbaijan
in 1828-1829, the total number of newcomers reached 35,560. Of these,
2,558 families, or 10,000 people, were settled in the Naxcivan
province. In the Qarabag (Karabakh) province, some 15,000 newcomers
were settled. In 1828-1829, 1,458 Armenian families (about 5,000
people) settled in the Irevan province. Tsatur Agayan cited statistics
for 182: Back then, there are 164,450 residents in the Armenian
district, of which 82,317 (50%) were ethnic Armenian and, as Tsatur
Agayan pointed out, of this number 25,151 (15%) were local Armenians,
while the rest were immigrants from Persia and the Ottoman Empire.

In short, in a few months after the signing of the Turkmanchay Treaty, 40,000 Armenian families moved from Persia to Azerbaijan.
Then, implementing the treaty with the Ottoman Empire, Russia moved
from Asia Minor to the Caucasus another 12,655 Armenian families in
1830. In 1828-1830, the empire resettled additional 84,600
families from Turkey to the Caucasus and gave them the best lands in
Karabakh. In the period from 1828-1839, 200,000 Armenians settled in
the mountain areas of Karabakh. In 1877-1879, during the
Russian-Turkish war for the south of the Caucasus, additional 185,000
Armenians were resettled. As a result, considerable
demographic changes took place in the north of Azerbaijan, which were
further deepened by the departure of the local population from the areas
populated by Armenians. These opposite migration flows were quite
"legal" because the Russian authorities did not prevent departure of
ethnic Turkic Azeri people to the Iranian and Ottoman lands.

The greatest migration took place in 1893-1894. Already in
1896, the number of ethnic Armenian arrivals reached 900,000. Because
of the immigration policy, the number of Armenians in the Transcaucasus
in 1908 reached 1.3 million, of which 1 million were invited by the
Tsarist authorities from foreign countries. Because of this,
the Armenian state appeared in 1921 in the Transcaucasus. Professor
V.P. Parsamyan wrote in his "History of the Armenian people -- Hayastan
1801-1900": "Before incorporation into Russia, the
population of Eastern Armenia (Irevan khanate) was 169,155, of which
57,305 (33.8%) were Armenian... After the occupation of the Kars
district of the Armenian Dashnak Republic (1918), the population
increased to 1,510,000. Of these, 795,000 were Armenian, 575,000 were
Azeris, and 140,000 were representatives of other ethnic groups."

By the late 19th century, a new phase of intensification of efforts of
the Armenians started as a result of a surge in ethnic awareness among
the peoples -- a phenomenon which spread to Asia from Europe. In
1912-1913, the Balkan wars started between the Ottoman Empire and the
Balkan peoples, which had a direct effect on the situation in the
Caucasus. At that time, Russia dramatically changed its policy for
Armenians. On the eve of the World War I, the Russian Empire
started to assign the role of its ally to the Armenians in the Ottoman
Turkey, where Armenians revolted against their state, hoping to create
an Armenian state on Turkey's territory with support of Russia and
European powers.

However, the Ottoman Empire's victories of 1915-1916 on the
battlefields of the World War I thwarted these plans: Mass deportation
of Armenians from the area combat operations in Asia Minor towards
Mesopotamia and Syria took place. But most of the Armenians --
more than 300,000 -- escaped to the South Caucasus with the retreating
Russian Army, mostly to the Azerbaijani lands.

After the fall in 1917 of the Russian Empire, the Transcaucasus
Confederation was created in the Transcaucasus, with Parliament in
Tbilisi, where Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenian parliamentarians
played an active role. However, the differences and difficult military
situation made preserving the confederate system impossible, and the
last sessions of Parliament resulted in creation in May 1918 of
independent states in the South Caucasus: The Georgian, Ararat
(Armenian) and Azerbaijani democratic republics (ADR). On 28 May 1918,
the ADR became the first democratic republic in the East and in the
Muslim world with a parliamentary form of government.

However, the leaders of the Dashnak Armenia started a massacre of
Azerbaijani population in the Erivan Governorate, Zangezur and other
areas of what today is the Republic of Armenia. At the same time,
Armenian troops, which were formed from detachments which deserted the
fronts of the World War I, started to move around the territory to
"clear the area" for the state of Armenia. During the difficult period,
in an attempt to stop bloodshed and massacre of civilians by the
Armenian detachments, a group of representatives of the leadership of
the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic agreed to cede the city of Yerevan
and its vicinities for creation of the Armenian state. The condition
for this concession, which causes much controversy in the Azerbaijani
historiography to this day, was that the Armenian side had to stop the
massacre of the Azerbaijani population and would withdraw territorial
claims against the ADR. When in June 1918 Azerbaijan, Armenia and
Georgia signed, each country individually, "agreements on peace and
friendship" with Turkey, the Armenian territory was 10,400 square
kilometers. Undisputed territory of the ADR was about 98,000 square
kilometers (with disputed territories about 114,000 square kilometers).

However, the Armenian leadership did not keep its word. In 1918, some
of the Russian and Armenian soldiers were recalled from the Turkish
front, and the detachments which deserted from the fronts of the World
War I, which were mainly ethnic Armenian, were skillfully directed
toward Azerbaijan and its capital, oil-rich Baku. On the way, they used
the scorched earth tactic, leaving behind the cinders of Azerbaijani
villages.

The Armenian militia, which was put together in haste, was made up of
people who agreed to carry out orders by Dashnak leaders, headed by
Stepan Shaumyan who was sent from Moscow to lead the communists in Baku
(Baksovet), under Bolshevik slogans. Then Shaumyan managed to transform
these detachments and man and fully arm a 20,000-strong grouping in
Baku, whose 90% were ethnic Armenians.

Armenian historian Ronald Suny described in detail in his book "The
Baku Commune" (1972) how the leaders of the Armenian movement, under the
aegis of Communist ideas, were building the ethnic Armenian state.

Precisely with help of the 20,000-strong well-armed strike grouping,
which was made up of enlisted men and officers with military experience
of the World War I, the Dashnak leaders, armed with Bolshevik ideas,
managed in the spring 1918 to organize a massacre of the population of
Baku and Azerbaijan's provinces on a hitherto unprecedented scale. In a
short period, 50,000-60,000 Azeris were killed, and the total number of
Azeris killed in the Caucasus, in Azerbaijan, Turkey and Persia was
500,000-600,000.

The Dashnak groupings then decided to seize the fertile lands of
Karabakh from Azerbaijan. In June 1918, the 1st Congress of the
Armenians of Karabakh was organized in Susa, and which declared
independence. The recently founded Republic of Armenia sent its troops
and staged large-scale pogroms and bloodshed in Azerbaijani villages in
Karabakh. Reacting to unjustified Armenian demands, Bakuvian communist
Anastas Mikoyan reported to V. Lenin in his telegram dated 22 May 1919:
"The agents of Armenian leadership -- the Dashnak -- are
trying to incorporate Karabakh into Armenia. For the Karabakh
Armenians, this would mean leaving their dwellings in Baku and making
their future dependent on Yerevan with which they have no ties
whatsoever. During their 5th Congress, the Armenians decided to
recognize the Azerbaijani authority and accept it."

Back then, the attempts of the Armenians nationalists to seize
Nagorno-Karabakh and incorporate it into Armenia had failed. On 23
November 1919, thanks to the efforts of the Azerbaijani leadership, a
peace treaty was signed in Tbilisi between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and
bloodshed was stopped.

But the situation in the region remained tense, and on the night from
26 to 27 April 1920, the 72,000-strong 11th Red Army crossed the
Azerbaijani borders and marched on Baku. As a result of the military
assault, Baku was occupied by the troops of Soviet Russia, and the
Soviet authority was established in Azerbaijan, which further
consolidated the positions of Armenians. In those years, the Armenians,
far from being oblivious of their plans, continued their struggle
against Azerbaijan. The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh was discussed many
times at the Caucasus Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Transcaucasus Section of the Russian
Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and at the bureau of the Central
Committee of the Armenian Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

On 15 July 1920, at a session of the Central Committee of the
Azerbaijani Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the decision was made on
incorporation of Karabakh and Zangezur into Azerbaijan. But the
situation started to unfold to Armenia's disadvantage, and on 2 December
1920, the Dashnak Government transferred power to the Military
Revolutionary Committee under the Bolsheviks without putting up any
resistance. The Soviet authority was established in Armenia. Despite
that, the Armenians again raised the issue of dividing Karabakh among
Armenia and Azerbaijan. On 27 July 1921, the political and organization
bureau of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party of
Bolsheviks discussed the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh. The bureau did not
accept the offer by representative of Soviet Armenia A. Bezadyan and
said that division along the lines of ethnic provenance of the residents
and incorporation of part of the territory into Armenia and of another
part into Azerbaijan was unacceptable both from the administrative and
from the economic point of view.

Dashnak leader and head of the Armenian state Ovannes Kachaznuni wrote on this adventure in 1923: "From
the very first day of our statehood we knew full well that a small,
poor, devastated country like Armenia, which is separated from the rest
of the world, cannot become truly independent and self-reliant; that
there is a need for support, for some external power... Two real
powers exist today, and we must reckon with them: These powers are
Russia and Turkey. By dint of the current circumstances, our country
today is joining the Russian orbit and is protected more than adequately
from a Turkish invasion... The issue of expansion of our borders can
be addressed only with reliance on Russia."

After the establishment in the Caucasus in 1920-1921 of the Soviet
rule, Moscow decided not to change in the region the borders which were
demarcated after the Armenian aggression among the former local
independent states.

But this could not take away the appetites of the ideologues of
Armenian national-separatism. In the Soviet period, the leaders of the
Armenian SSR more than once petitioned, and even demanded from, the
Kremlin in the 1950s-1970s that the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Area
(NKAO) of Azerbaijan should be passed to Armenia. However, back then
the USSR leadership categorically refused to satisfy the unfounded
claims of the Armenian side. The changes in the position of the USSR
leadership occurred in the mid-1980s, during the Gorbachev's Perestroika
period. It is no accident that precisely with the beginning in
1987 of the Perestroika-related innovations in the USSR, Armenia's
claims to the NKAO gained a new impetus and nature.

The Armenian organizations Krunk in the NKAO itself and the Karabakh
Committee in Yerevan, which mushroomed after Perestroika, had again set
out to implement the project of effective separation of
Nagorno-Karabakh. The Dashnaktsutyun party emerged again: At its 23d
Congress in Athens in 1985, it set as its top-priority objective "creation
of a single and independent Armenia" and implementation of this slogan
by incorporating Nagorno-Karabakh, Naxcivan (Azerbaijan) and Javakheti
(Georgia) into Armenia. As always, the Armenian Church, the
nationalist circles among the intelligentsia, and the foreign ethnic
Armenian communities were involved in the implementation of this plan.
Later, Russian researcher S.I. Chernyavskiy noted: "In contrast to
Armenia, Azerbaijan did not -- and does not -- have an organized and
politically active ethnic communities abroad, and the Karabakh conflict
has effectively deprived Azerbaijanis of all support from the leading
Western countries because these later have traditionally supported
pro-Armenian position."

The process started in 1988 with deportation of new groups of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The NKAO Soviet declared on 21 February 1988 Karabakh's withdrawal from the Azerbaijani SSR and accession to Armenia.
First blood was shed in the Karabakh conflict on 25 February 1988 in
Askeran (Karabakh), when two young Azeris were killed. Later, in Baku,
in the district of Vorovskiy, an ethnic Armenian killed an ethnic Azeri
policeman. On 18 July 1988, the Supreme Council of the USSR
reaffirmed that Nagorno-Karabakh was part of Azerbaijan and territorial
changes were impossible.

But Armenians continued to disseminate leaflets, issued threats to
Azerbaijanis and set their houses on fire. As a result, the last
Azerbaijani left the administrative center of Nagorno-Karabakh, the city
of Xankandi (Stepanakert) on 21 September.

An escalation of the dormant conflict followed, which resulted in
expulsion of Azeris from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. In Azerbaijan,
the authorities were paralyzed, and streams of refugees and growing
anger among the Azerbaijani people were bound to result in mass
Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes. In February 1988, the tragic act of provocation took place in the town of Sumqayit in Azerbaijan, in which Armenians, Azeris and representatives of other ethnic groups were killed.

Anti-Azerbaijani
hysteria started in the Soviet press, in which an attempt was made to
present the Azerbaijani people as cannibals, monsters, "pan-Islamists"
and "pan-Turkists." Passions around Nagorno-Karabakh were flying high:
Azeris who were banished from Armenia settled in 42 cities and
districts of Azerbaijan. Here are the tragic results of the first phase
of the Karabakh conflict: About 200,000 Azeris, 18,000 Muslim Kurds,
and thousands of Russians were ousted from Armenia by force, at
gunpoint; 255 Azeris were killed: Two were beheaded, 11 were burned
alive, three were cut into pieces, 23 were driven over by car, 41 were
beaten to death, 19 froze to death in the mountains, 8 went missing and
so forth. Also, 57 women and 23 children were cruelly killed. After
that, on 10 December 1988, the modern-day Dashnak declared Armenia a
"republic without Turkic population." The nationalist hysteria which
raged in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and difficult lives of ethnic
Armenians who moved in is described in the books by Bakuvian Armenian Robert Arakelov, "The Karabakh Notebook" and "Nagorno-Karabakh: Culprits of the tragedy are known."

After the Sumqayit events of February 1988, which were instigated by
the Soviet KGB and Armenian emissaries, an open anti-Azerbaijan campaign
was launched in the Soviet press and on TV.

The Soviet leadership and media, which were silent when Armenian
nationalists were driving Azeris out of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh,
suddenly "regained consciousness" and grew hysteric over the
"anti-Armenian pogroms" in Azerbaijan. The USSR leadership openly
adopted Armenian position and strived to blame everything on
Azerbaijan. The main target of the Kremlin authorities was the growing
national liberation movement of the Azerbaijani people. On the
night from 19 to 20 January 1990, the Soviet authorities under Gorbachev
perpetrated a criminal act which was horrifying in its cruelty. In the
criminal operation, 134 civilians were killed, 700 were wounded, and
400 people went missing.

Perhaps the most terrible and inhuman action by Armenian nationalists
in Nagorno-Karabakh was genocide of the population of the Azerbaijani
city of Xocali. On the night of 25 February 1992, the greatest
tragedy of 20th century -- the Xocali genocide took place. First, the
sleeping city was surrounded by Armenian troops with support of the
366th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the CIS, and then massive fire was
opened on Xocali by artillery and heavy military hardware. With support
of the armored hardware of the 366th Regiment, the city was seized by
Armenian occupiers. Armed Armenians were shooting the civilians who
were trying to escape, showing no mercy. On a cold and snowy night in
February those people who managed to escape Armenian ambushes and flee
into forests and mountains froze to death.

As a result of atrocities by criminal Armenian troops, from
among Xocali resident 613 civilians were killed, 487 were mutilated, and
1,275 -- the elderly, children, and women -- were taken prisoners and
subjected to unbelievable tortures, humiliation and insults. Nothing is
known to this day about the fate of 150 people. It was genuine
genocide. Of the 613 people who were killed in Xocali, 106 were women,
63 were children and 70 were elderly. Eight families were killed
entirely without any survivors, 24 children lost both parents and 130
children lost one of the parents. Fifty-six people were killed in a
particularly cruel and heinous way. They were burned alive,
decapitated, skin was cut off their faces, eyes of children were cut
out, bellies of pregnant women were cut with bayonets. Armenians
insulted even the dead. The Azerbaijani state and people will never
forget the Xocali tragedy.

The Xocali tragedy eliminated any chance which existed before of a
peaceful regulation of the Karabakh conflict. Two Armenian presidents
-- Robert Kocharyan and incumbent Serzh Sargsyan, as well as Defense
Minister Seyran Oganyan, took an active part in combat operations during
the Karabakh war and in killings of Azeri civilians, in particular in
Xocali.

After the Xocali tragedy of February 1992, the righteous wrath of the
Azeri people, caused by the atrocities and impunity of the Armenian
nationalists, escalated into the open phase of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
military confrontation. Bloody combat operations were launched, with
employment of aviation, armored hardware, missile launchers, heavy
artillery and large military formations.

The Armenian side use banned chemical weapons against Azerbaijani
civilians. In the absence of practically any serious support from major
international powers, Azerbaijan after a series of counteroffensive
managed to liberate most of the occupied territories in
Nagorno-Karabakh.

In this situation Armenia and separatists from Karabakh achieved
cease-fire several times with mediation of world powers and started
negotiations, but then, perfidiously violating the negotiated
agreements, suddenly resumed military offensives on the front line. For
example, on 19 August 1993, the talks were conducted in Tehran by the
Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations on Iran's initiative, but precisely
at that moment the Armenian troops, in violation of all
agreements, perfidiously started an offensive on the Karabakh front
towards the Agdam, Fuzuli and Cabrayil districts. The blockade of
Naxcivan by Armenia also continued as the objective was to separate it
from Azerbaijan.

On 4 June 1993, Surat Huseynov's revolt started Ganca when he turned
his troops from the Karabakh front line and marched towards Baku to
seize power in the country. Azerbaijan was on the verge a new, already
civil war. Besides Armenian aggression, Azerbaijan encountered overt
separatism in the country's south, where rebellious field commander
Alikram Humbatov announced the founding of the "Talysh-Mugan Republic."
In the difficult situation, on 15 June 1993, Milli Maclis (Parliament)
of Azerbaijan elected Heydar Aliyev the head of the country's Supreme
Council. On 17 July, President Abulfaz Elcibay stepped down and
presidential powers were passed by Milli Maclis to Heydar Aliyev.

In the north of Azerbaijan, separatist sentiments gained currency among
the Lezgi nationalists who intended secession of Azerbaijani districts
on the border of Russia. The situation aggravated further because
Azerbaijan at the same time was on the verge of a civil war among
different political and paramilitary groups within the country. Taking
advantage of the political collapse and an attempted military coup in
Azerbaijan, where power struggle was under way, neighboring Armenia
launched an offensive and occupied Azerbaijani lands adjacent to
Nagorno-Karabakh. On 23 July, Armenians seized one of the ancient
Azerbaijani cities, Agdam. On 14-15 September, Armenians made
an attempt to break into Azerbaijani territories from their positions in
Qazax, then in Tovuz, Gadabay, Zangilan. On 21 September the villages
of the Zangilan, Cabrayil, Tovuz and Ordubad districts came under heavy
fire.

On 30 November 1993, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister H. Hasanov delivered a
speech at the OSCE meeting in Rome, in which he said that Armenia's
aggressive policy in the name of creation of "Great Armenia," it had
occupied 20% of the Azerbaijani territory. More than 18,000 civilians
were killed, about 50,000 were wounded, 4,000 people were taken
prisoners, and 88,000 residential buildings, more than 1,000 economic
facilities, 250 schools and educational institutions were destroyed.

After Azerbaijan's and Armenia's accession to the UN and OSCE, Armenia
seized the city of Susa after making the statement that it would follow
the principles of these organizations. Back then, when a group of UN
representatives was visiting Azerbaijan on a fact-finding mission to
investigate Armenia's aggression, the Armenian troops seized the Lacin
District and thereby established a corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh
with Armenia. During the unofficial meeting of the Geneva "Five,"
Armenians took control of the Kalbacar District, and during the visit of
the head of the OSCE Minsk Group to the region, they seized the Agdam
District. After adoption of the resolution that Armenians were to
unconditionally liberate the Azerbaijani territories which they had
seized, they occupied the Fuzuli District. And while the OSCE head
Margaretha af Ugglas was in the region, Armenia occupied Zangilan
District. After that, in late November 1993, Armenians seized an area
near the Xudafarin bridge (Cabrayil District) and brought under their
control 161 kilometers of Azerbaijan's border with Iran.

Finally, on 23 December 1993, a meeting war organization between
Ter-Petrosyan and Heydar Aliyev with mediation of Turkmen President S.
Niyazov. Numerous meetings were held with officials from Russia, Turkey
and Armenia. On 11 May 1994, a tentative truce was declared. On 5-6
December 1994 at the OSCE summit in Budapest and on 13-15 May in
Morocco, at the 7th Summit of the Islamic Conference Organization, H.
Aliyev in his speeches condemned the Armenian policy and aggression
against Azerbaijan. He also pointed out Armenians did not comply with the UN resolutions No 822, 853, 874 and 884,
in which Armenia's aggression actions were denounced and demands were
made for immediate withdrawal from the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

By the end of the First Karabakh War, Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh
and seven more Azerbaijani districts -- Agdam, Fuzuli, Cabrayil,
Zangilan, Qubadli, Lacin, and Kalbacar, from which ethnic Azeris
population was ousted, and all these areas were reduced to ruins by
aggressors. At present, about 20% of Azerbaijan's territory (17,000
square kilometers) -- 12 districts and 700 towns and villages -- is
under Armenian occupation. During the struggle of Armenians for
creation of "Great Armenia," in the entire period of conflict, they have
mercilessly exterminated 20,000 and captured 4,000 ethnic Azeris.

On the occupied territories they have destroyed about 4,000 industrial
and agricultural facilities with the total area of 6 million square
meters, about 1,00o educational institutions, about 180,000 residential
apartments, 3,000 cultural and educational centers and 700 medical
facilities. 616 schools, 225 kindergartens, 11 vocational schools, four
colleges, one university, 842 clubs, 962 libraries, 13 museums, two
theaters and 183 cinemas were destroyed.

There are 1 million refugees and internally displaced persons
in Azerbaijan -- in other words, one citizen in eight. The wounds which
were caused by Armenians to the Azerbaijani people are countless. In
total, in the 20th century 1 million Azeris were killed, and 1.5 million
Azeris were driven out of Armenia.

Armenia organized on the Azerbaijani lands mass terror: Explosions
were frequent in the buses, trains, in the Baku metro trains. In
1989-1994, Armenian terrorists and separatist organized 373 terrorist
acts on the territory of Azerbaijan, which killed 1,568 people and
wounded 1,808.

Let us note that the adventure of the Armenian nationalists to create
"Great Armenia" cost ordinary Armenians dearly. At present, the
population of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh is half of what it was. In Armenia, the population is 1.8 million, and in Nagorno-Karabakh 80,000-90,000, which is half of the 1989 numbers. The
resumption of the military operations on the Karabakh front might drive
almost entire ethnic Armenian population out of the South Caucasus
region and force them, as statistics show, to move to the Krasnodar and
Stavropol territories of Russia and Ukraine's Crimea. This would be a
logical outcome of the foolish policy of the nationalists and criminals
who have usurped power in the Republic of Armenia and occupy the
Azerbaijani territories.

The Azerbaijani people and leadership are doing their best to restore
the country's territorial integrity and liberate the territories under
the Armenian occupation as soon as possible. For this purpose,
Azerbaijani pursues an integrated foreign policy, develops its
military-industrial complex, and upgrades its Army which will restore
Azerbaijan's sovereignty by force if the peaceful measures cannot
persuade the aggressor nation of Armenia into withdrawal from the
occupied Azerbaijani territories.